1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to rendering of HTML tables, and more particularly to a method for converting HTML tables to prose according to a template.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Tables are used extensively in Web content design. Tables are generally used to accomplish one of two goals: to concisely convey data and data relationships to humans, or to effect formatting of content, for example to align columns of text in newspaper galley format.
Tables can be a very effective means of communication. However, table-based presentation becomes a liability when users are unable to actually see the information, as is the case for sight-impaired users who must rely on the aural rendition of content.
Visually rendered tables are persistent and nonlinear entities that can be studied at leisure. In contrast, aural presentations of tabular data need to proceed linearly and, since the spoken word is fleeting, have temporal constraints. Current methods to aurally render tabular information are unable to effectively deal with these constraints.
For example, the table of Olympic cycling results presented in FIG. 1 can be aurally rendered by a commercially available browser as follows: “Cycling Track Country Gold Silver Bronze Total FRA 4 2 0 6 GER 2 2 2 6 AUS 1 2 3 6 GBR 1 1 2 4 NED 1 1 0 2”.
This rendition is difficult to understand, in part, because the data relationships are not explained or reinforced. The user needs to remember the sequence of column titles, “Gold”, “Silver”, “Bronze”, and “Total”, and must associate the numbers heard with the corresponding column titles.
This task can be difficult because the interval between the time a column heading is rendered and the time an actual value is rendered can be long. Linear presentation also tends to interweave column and row information, for example the row heading “FRA” follows the column heading “Total”, obscuring or destroying context (e.g. making it difficult to associate “Bronze” with “0” correctly in the first row.)
Therefore, a need exists for a method of specifying rules for contextual reinforcement, ornamentation, cell content transformation, and traversal sequence.